Report suggests U.S. talk with Iran, Syria / Iraq Study Group's draft gives no time for U.S. withdrawal

David E. Sanger, New York Times

Published 4:00 am, Monday, November 27, 2006

2006-11-27 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- A draft report on strategies for Iraq, which will be debated here by a bipartisan commission beginning today, urges an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks with Iran and Syria, but sets no timetables for a military withdrawal, according to officials who have seen all or parts of the document.

While the diplomatic strategy appears likely to be accepted, with some amendments, by the 10-member Iraq Study Group, members of the commission and outsiders involved in its work said they expected a potentially divisive debate about timetables for beginning a U.S. withdrawal.

In interviews, several officials said that announcing a major withdrawal is the only way to persuade the government of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to focus on creating an effective Iraqi military force.

Several commission members, including some Democrats, are discussing proposals that call for a declaration that within a specified period of time, perhaps as short as a year, a significant number of U.S. troops should be withdrawn, regardless of whether the Iraqi government's own forces are declared ready to defend the country themselves.

One proposal would involve putting more U.S. trainers into Iraqi military units in a last-ditch improvement effort, coupled with a withdrawal that in a year would leave between 70,000 and 80,000 U.S. troops in the country, compared with about 150,000 now.

"It's not at all clear that we can reach consensus on the military questions," one member of the commission said late last week.

The draft, according to those who have seen it, appears to link U.S. withdrawal to the performance of the Iraqi military, as President Bush has done. But the performance benchmarks are not specific.

While the commission is scheduled to meet in Washington for two days this week, officials say the session may be extended, if members are having trouble reaching a consensus. Meanwhile, Bush will visit Latvia and Estonia, and then head to Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday for two days of meetings with al-Maliki and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

The recommendations of the commission, an independent advisory group created at the suggestion of several members of Congress, are expected to carry unusual weight, because its members, drawn from both political parties, have deep experience in foreign policy, including its co-chairmen, former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican, and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana.

While the commission has met many times interviewing administration officials, policy experts, military officers, and others, the meeting today will be the first time that members have gathered to hash out the most difficult issues. The basis for their discussion will be a draft report that Baker and Hamilton directed the commission staff to prepare based on informal conversations among the members.

The group is expected to present its final report to Bush and to Congress in December.

The commission's co-chairmen have urged members and staff not to discuss their deliberations. As a result, those who were willing to talk about the commission's work and the draft reports did so only on the condition of anonymity.

Bush is not bound by the commission's recommendations, and during a trip to Southeast Asia that ended just before Thanksgiving, he made clear that he would also give considerable weight to studies under way by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his own National Security Council. In Bogor, Indonesia, he said he planned to make no decisions on troop increases or decreases "until I hear from a variety of sources, including our own United States military."

But privately, administration officials seem deeply concerned about the weight of the findings of the Baker-Hamilton commission. "I think there is fear that anything they say will seem like they are etched in stone tablets," said one senior U.S. diplomat. "It's going to be hard for the president to argue that a group this distinguished, and this bipartisan, has got it wrong."

Bush spent 90 minutes with commission members in a closed session at the White House two weeks ago "essentially arguing why we should embrace what amounts to a 'stay the course' strategy," said one commission official who was present.

Officials said the draft of the section on diplomatic strategy, which was heavily influenced by Baker, seemed to reflect his public criticism of the administration for its unwillingness to talk with enemies, particularly Iran and Syria.

But senior administration officials, including Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser, have expressed skepticism that either nation will go along, especially while Iran is locked in a confrontation with the United States over its nuclear program. "Talking isn't a strategy," he said in October.